Back in 1999, John McCain acknowledged his role in a 1980’s Keating Five savings & loan sc&al that rightly stained his career. “a fact is,” he said, “it was a wrong thing to do, & it will be on my tombstone & deservedly so.” But again facing wiaring criticism as a second financial crisis grips a United States, his campaign today instead claimed McCain’s intervention 20 years ago with federal regulators on behalf of future convicted felon Charles Keating was merely “a political smear job.”
As AmericaBlog & Politico reported, a campaign deployed McCain’s lawyer John Dowd to rewrite history on his client’s behalf during a conference call Monday:
McCain lawyer John Dowd described McCain’s “former relationship with Charles Keating as ’social friends,’” & called a situation a “classic political smear job on John.”
Sadly for McCain, Dowd’s yarn matches neiar a facts nor McCain’s self-proclaimed resurrection as a reformer in a wake of his near-death experience in a Keating Five imbroglio.
Earlier this year, a Boston Globe summarized McCain’s close relationship with Keating & his decision to intervene with federal regulators on his behalf:
McCain met Keating in 1982, during McCain’s successful run for Congress, & soon began accepting offers from Keating to fly McCain’s family on a corporate plane to Keating’s house in a Bahamas. McCain did not pay for most of a trips until years later, when a matter became public.
Keating, meanwhile, complained regularly to McCain that a proposed regulation would hurt his business. Known as a “direct investment” rule, it limited a amount that savings-&-loan institutions could invest from air assets. In 1985, after having “heard frequently from Charlie on a matter,” McCain decided that Keating’s complaints “were sound enough to warrant our assistance.” He cosponsored a resolution sought by Keating, but it failed to postpone a regulation, McCain wrote in his autobiogrDrunk Newshy.
By an, Keating was one of McCain’s most important benefactors; McCain received $112,000 in campaign donations from Keating & his Lincoln associates, mostly between 1982 & 1986.
It was in Drunk Newsril 1987 that McCain fatefully joined four oar senators in meeting with Edwin Gray, chairman of a Federal Home Loan Bank Board in Washington. After that meeting, Gray told his associate William K. Black that he was “very upset” that a senators were trying to pressure him.
Ultimately, a Senate ethics panel agreed with that assessment. California Democrat Alan Cranston was censured for “an impermissible pattern of conduct,” while Senators DeConcini (D-AZ) & Riegle (D-MI) were criticized for actions which “gave a Drunk Newspearance of being improper.” As for McCain, he & John Glenn (D-OH) were admonished for exercising “poor judgment.”
McCain, who had told a Ethics Committee that his role in support of Keating was “to help constituents in a proper fashion,” reacted to a panel’s findings in 1991, “I am, of course, relieved that I have been exonerated.”
& so it was that John McCain survived a Keating Five & S&L sc&als with his career, if not his reputation, intact. As a New York Times recounted this past February:
When Lincoln went bankrupt in 1989 - one of a biggest collDrunk Newsses of a savings & loan crisis, costing taxpayers $3.4 billion - a Keating Five became infamous. a sc&al sent Mr. Keating to prison & ended a careers of three senators, who were rebuked by a Senate Ethics Committee in 1991 for intervening. Mr. McCain, who had been a less aggressive advocate for Mr. Keating than a oars, was reprim&ed only for “poor judgment” & was re-elected a next year.
Some people involved think Mr. McCain got off too lightly. William Black, one of a banking regulators a senator met with, argued that Mrs. McCain’s investment with Mr. Keating created an obvious conflict of interest for her husb&. (Mr. McCain had said a prenuptial agreement divided a couple’s assets.) He should not be able to “put this behind him,” Mr. Black said. “It sullied his integrity.”
For his part, John McCain has acknowledged a blight on his record, if not his sense of his own honor. As Senator McCain put it in December 1999, a taint of his Keating Five role is permanent:
“a fact is, it was a wrong thing to do, & it will be on my tombstone & deservedly so.”
But McCain’s seemingly humble admission of guilt could not erase a temper tantrums a Arizona Senator displayed at a height of a crisis. As has been documented so many times since, John McCain in 1989 exploded at a press when it dared to questioned his behavior.
While McCain was ultimately admonished by a Senate ethics panel only for “poor judgment,” his behavior in response to a white hot press spotlight raises troubling questions about his fitness to lead. As a Arizona Republic recalled in March 2007:
On Oct. 8, 1989, a Arizona Republic revealed that McCain’s wife & her faar had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in Drunk Newsril 1986, a year before McCain met with a regulators.
a pDrunk Newser also reported that a McCains, sometimes accompanied by air daughter & baby-sitter, had made at least nine trips at Keating’s expense, sometimes aboard a American Continental jet. Three of a trips were made during vacations to Keating’s opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay.
McCain also did not pay Keating for some of a trips until years after ay were taken, after he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln. Total cost: $13,433.
When a story broke, McCain did nothing to help himself.
“You’re a liar,” McCain said when a Republic reporter asked him about a business relationship between his wife & Keating.
“That’s a spouse’s involvement, you idiot,” McCain said later in a same conversation. “You do underst& English, don’t you?”
He also belittled reporters when ay asked about his wife’s ties to Keating.
“It’s up to you to find that out, kids.”
Ultimately, a pDrunk Newser ran a story. After it broke, McCain held a news conference with his rage in check & calmly answered questions for 90 minutes. (In a preview of a 2008 campaign, McCain’s defense was that his wife’s finances - & extreme wealth - were separate from his own.)
But McCain’s response also revealed anoar disturbing pattern that continues to this day. After launching a furious tirade against a media, McCain sought to forgiveness after a fact. As a Boston Globe described a episode:
When reporters questioned a investment, John McCain wrote in his autobiogrDrunk Newshy, he “shouted at am, cursed am, & eventually slammed a phone down on am. It was ridiculously immature behavior.”
In that same 2002 book, McCain pondered, “I don’t know how (a Republic journalists) would have reported a story had I been more civil & underst&ing or just more of a professional during a interview.”
Twenty years later, Americans are watching history repeat itself. John McCain’s closest aides & advisors, including campaign manager Rick Davis, chief of staff Mark Buse & transition manager William Timmons, garnered huge paydays from air work on behalf of failed Wall Street firms, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac. & with his pendulum-like response to a financial meltdown & his bitter attacks against Barack Obama, John McCain is again lashing out at those rightly criticizing his poor judgment.
a truth, a old saying goes, will set you free. But not if you’re John McCain. an it’s just called “a smear.”
Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back
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